When Gauguin wrote about the “cinctures and corsets� of contemporary French women in his journal Noa Noa, he was not referring to the restrictions placed on women in metaphoric terms (Gauguin 46). Instead, he was making a reference to the typical dress of a Frenchwoman during the late nineteenth century. In her book Fashion in Art, Marie Simon explores the trends of fashion during the time of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements in France. She explains that “unlike clothing in our day, nineteenth-century dress was an architecture superimposed on the body, hiding it to a great extent and modifying it profoundly� (Simon 158). Women were expected to present their bodies in contorted shapes that did not actually mirror their own natural figures. Such body-altering accessories included bustles to enlarge the hip area, crinolines to expand the skirts, boustieres to lift the chest, and, the most infamous of them all, corsets. The literal architecture of these pieces of clothing, particularly the corset, actually caused deformations in the bodies of the women who wore them. Looking at pictures of what the results of corsetry look like, it is no wonder Gauguin marveled at the sight of naked and unrestrained women.
Beyond the physical restraints of such elaborate costuming of the body, the amount of time consumed by amassing and tending to the actual clothing itself was quite large. Women, especially those of the high society, were expected to live leisurely lives. Because they were not “subjected to the constraints of work, a woman could surround herself at leisure with delicate, cumbersome and imposing finery� (Simon 18). This illusion of leisure, however, came at a large price. In La Code de la Mode, a nineteenth century French writer catalogues the details of such precision in dress and elaborates upon this great commitment
A fashionable woman who wishes to be well dressed in any situation must have all she needs to make seven or eight changes of clothing in a day: her dressing gown in the morning, her riding costume for the promenade, her town costume if she goes out on foot, her visiting clothes if she goes out in her carriage, her dinner dress and her evening or theatre robe (qtd. Simon 21)
For French women in the era of Gauguin, fashion was the means by which they could gain social power and influence. At the same time, however, it restricted their bodies and their time by encumbering them with weight and pain, almost like an extremely decorative version of a ball and chain. Gauguin’s commentary of this fashion was quite insightful for his time and makes his Polynesian nudes appear even more meaningful and revolutionary in hindsight. The connection that he identified between French women’s fashion and status in society was key to the inequality they were experiencing because they were inextricably intertwined: in a never-ending cycle one was always impeding upon the other.